Robert Wilson - The Hidden Assassins

'I don't let many people in here,' said Covo. 'They get spooked.'

'By the silence, I imagine,' said Falcon. 'One would expect so many faces to be expressing themselves.'

'It reminds people too much of death,' said Covo. 'My talent is not artistic. I am a craftsman. I can recreate a face, but I cannot give it life. They are inanimate, without the motivation of soul. I embalm people in wax and clay.'

'The faces coming out of the rock seem animated to me,' said Falcon.

'I think I've started to feel the restraint of my own mortality,' said Covo. 'Let me show you our friend.'

To the right of the block of stone was a table with what looked like four heads under a sheet.

'I made up four copies of his faceless head,' said Covo. 'Then I made a series of sketches of how I thought he looked. Finally, I started to build.'

He lifted the sheet off the first head. It had no nose, mouth or ears.

'Here I'm trying to get the feeling for how much skin and fat would cover the bones,' said Covo. 'I've looked at the whole body and estimated the extent of his covering.'

He lifted the sheet off the next two heads.

'Here I've been working with the features, trying to fit the nose, mouth, ears and eyes together on the face,' said Covo. 'The third one, as you've probably noticed, is more decisive. Once I've reached this stage I do more sketches, working with hair and colour. This fourth figure I made last night. I painted him and attached the hair just this morning. It's my best guess.'

The sheet slipped off to reveal a head with brown eyes, long lashes, aquiline nose, sharp cheekbones, but with the cheeks themselves slightly sunken. The beard was clipped close to the skin, the hair long, dark and flowing and the teeth white and perfect.

'I'm only worried that I may have got carried away,' said Covo, 'and made him too dashing.'

Falcon took photographs, while Covo made a selection from the sketches of other possible looks. By 11 a.m. Falcon was heading back across the river to the Jefatura. He had the sketches scanned and the image of the victim transferred to the computer. He called Pintado and asked him to email the dental X-rays. He put together a page with the corpse's approximate age, height and weight, the information about the hernia op, tattoos and skull fracture. He called Pablo, who gave him the email address of the right man in the CNI in Madrid who would distribute it to all other intelligence agencies, the FBI and Interpol.

Ramirez called just as he was leaving.

'I've spoken to the vascular surgeon at the hospital,' he said. 'He's identified the hernia mesh taken from the body as one known by the trade name SURUMESH, made by Suru International Ltd of Mumbai in India.'

'Does he use them?'

'For inguinal hernias he uses a German make called TiMESH.'

'You're learning stuff, Jose Luis.'

'I'm completely fascinated,' said Ramirez, drily. 'He tells me Suru International would probably supply hospitals through medical supplies wholesalers.'

'I'll speak to Pablo. The CNI can get a list from Suru International.'

'Then they've got to contact the hospitals supplied by those wholesalers. It's quite possible that a hospital takes meshes made by a number of different manufacturers. Then there are the specialist hernia clinics. This is going to take time.'

'We're moving on a lot of fronts,' said Falcon. 'I have a face to work with now. We have dental X-rays. I'm thinking more about America. He had orthodontic work done-'

'Most inguinal hernias occur over the age of forty,' said Ramirez. 'Dr Pintado estimates the guy's hernia op as three years old. So we're only looking at, say, the last four, maximum five years of hernia operations. Maybe two and a half million ops worldwide.'

'Keep thinking positively, Jose Luis.'

'I'll see you next year.'

Falcon told him about the meeting with Juez del Rey at midday and hung up. He sent another email about Suru International to his contact in the CNI. He got up to leave again. His personal mobile vibrated, no name came up on the screen. He took the call anyway.

'Diga,' he said.

'It's me, Consuelo.'

He sat down slowly, thinking, my God. His stomach leapt, his blood came alive. His heart beat loudly in his head.

'It's been a long time,' he said.

'I saw the news about Ines,' she said. 'I wanted to tell you how sorry I am and to let you know that I'm thinking of you. I know you must be very busy…so I won't keep you.'

'Thank you, Consuelo,' he said, willing something else to come to mind. 'It's good to hear your voice again. When I saw you in the street…'

'I'm sorry for that, too,' she said. 'It couldn't be helped.'

He didn't know what that meant. He needed something to keep her on the phone. Nothing seemed relevant. His mind was too full of the corpse, hernia meshes and two and a half million ops world-wide.

'I should let you go,' she said. 'You must be under a lot of pressure.'

'It was good of you to call.'

'It was the least I could do,' she said.

'I'd like to hear from you again, you know.'

'I'm thinking of you, Javier,' she said, and it was all over.

He sat back, looking at the phone as if her voice was still inside it. She'd kept his number for four years. She was thinking of him. Do these things have meaning? Was that just social convention? It didn't feel like it. He saved her number.

The car park at the back of the Jefatura was brutally hot, the car windscreens blinded by the sun in the clear sky. Falcon sat in the car with the air conditioning blasting into his face. Those few sentences, the sound of her voice, had opened up a whole chapter of memory which he'd closed off for years. He shook his head and pulled out of the Jefatura car park. He headed for El Cerezo the back way, via the Expo ground, crossing the river at the Puente del Alamillo. He arrived at the bombsite at the same time as Ramirez.

'Any news about the electricians?' asked Falcon.

'Perez called. They've been through seventeen building sites. Nothing.'

'What's Ferrera doing?'

'She's chasing down witnesses who might have seen our friend with the hernia being dumped in the bin on Calle Boteros.'

They went into the pre-school. Juez del Rey was alone, waiting for them in the classroom. They sat down on the edges of the school desks. Del Rey folded his arms and stared into the floor. He gave them a perfect recap of the major findings of the investigation so far. He didn't use notes. He got all the names of the Moroccan witnesses correct. He had the whole timetable of what had happened in and around the mosque, in his head. He'd decided to make an impression on the two detectives and it worked. Falcon felt Ramirez relax. Calderon's replacement was no fool.

'The two most significant recent developments in the investigation concern me the most,' said del Rey. 'Ricardo Gamero's suicide and the belief that his source was working as a double agent.'

'We had a sighting of Gamero by a security guard in the Archaeological Museum in the Parque Maria Luisa,' said Falcon. 'We've got a police artist working on some sketches of the older man he was seen talking to.'

'I'll call Serrano,' said Ramirez, 'see how that's going.'

'I'm not convinced that a sense of failure at preventing this bomb attack from taking place was enough to drive a man like Gamero to suicide,' said del Rey. 'There's something more. Failure is too general. Feeling personally responsible is what drives people to kill themselves.'

'The police artist didn't have much luck with the security guard last night,' said Ramirez, coming back from his call. 'He's been with him again this morning. They should have something by lunchtime.'

'I'm not convinced by Miguel Botin as a double, either,' said del Rey. 'His brother was maimed by an Islamic terrorist bomb, for God's sake. Can you see someone like that being turned?'